


And all the sea were ink

by lotesse



Series: If all the world were apple pie and all the sea were ink [2]
Category: Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Animal Transformation, Gen, Magic, Mentors, Separations, Transformation, learning, power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 09:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17423456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: She stared into the fire, trying to imagine it, to connect the impetuous boy in Ogion's story with the man she had met in the Undertomb on Atuan. Trying to imagine him slipping loose the bonds of his humanity, abandoning himself in favor of an animal shape, his hawk shape.





	And all the sea were ink

She stared into the fire, trying to imagine it, to connect the impetuous boy in Ogion's story with the man she had met in the Undertomb on Atuan. Trying to imagine him slipping loose the bonds of his humanity, abandoning his skin in favor of an animal shape, his hawk shape.

“Sparrowhawk,” she said. “That's his use-name, here, yes?”

“He has been known by that name since his boyhood.”

“But he's nothing like a bird of prey. He has no predatory instinct. I noted it is him; one of his principle failings.”

Ogion laughed, then, as he only rarely did, the dry deep full sound rolling out from his chest. “Someday,” he said, when he had regained his breath, “I will learn how the boy does it, and then I will have learned a secret worth knowing.”

“What secret?” she asked.

“He breaches the walls of Atuan and takes away her treasure and her priestess, and you say he lacks the instinct to take the kill.”

She considered the proposition. “But it was only because he did not approach me as a predator that I went with him,” she said at length. “He was gentle and patient with me; I think he would have let himself die there rather than force me.”

“He is the most powerful of the mages of Roke; he will be archmage; and he is no innocent.”

“His scars-”

Ogion interrupted her. “Not only the scars. He came to me a killer already.”

She said nothing, looked at him through the dim and flickering light of the fire-lit room, waited for him to speak again. 

“I heard of what he'd done,” Ogion said, “and went down-mountain to find him. He had not spoken since a Kargish attack on his home village – you know he was born in Ten Alders? – that he'd prevented by calling a fog. The villagers were able to effectively slaughter the raiders under its cover.”

Ogion sighed then. “He was thirteen,” he said. “He'd been beaten and put to hard work forging weaponry by his father, the village metalsmith. He was not well-liked then, nor later when he went to Roke. It has taken Ged many years to learn to be gentle with others. I suspect he has not yet learned to be gentle with himself.”

Tenar was silent for a moment, reflecting. She thought of the moral difference between a gentle nature and a harsh one; a harsh person could sometimes accomplish things that a more agreeable one – like Penthe, she did miss Penthe, here on this strange stony island – would let pass through their fingers. Penthe had not escaped from Atuan, but Tenar had, and Tenar was less kind, and harder, than Penthe.

“In Atuan,” she offered at length; and she noted that when she said the word her teacher went still, “they taught me to be very hard. I was eaten; I had no pity to be appealed to. But then Ged came, and showed me – light, at first, but also other things – and I did not feel empty and dried up, but full and welling-over. It was frightening,” she admitted; a rare moment of honesty for her, she who did not like well to speak of her weaknesses.

“Yes,” Ogion agreed. “It is frightening. It was because Ged had struggled with that fear, too, that he was able to offer you replenishment. Now that you have passed through the boundaries of your fears, you will be able to do the same for others, if you choose.”

“Oh,” Tenar said, and then fell silent, thinking furiously. “It may be that I will never see him again,” she said after a while spent parsing her roiling feelings.

“That I do not know,” Ogion answered her. “You could find him, if you wanted, I am certain. But it may be that yours paths will only cross the once. Not everything that is important in our lives is of duration.”

They sat together in silence unrelieved for another space of time; and then as the fire dwindled low Tenar made her excuses and sought her bed. The dishes of the evening meal had all been washed and put up; the goats were secure in their pen. Ogion remained alone, sitting by the glowing coals, as still and silent and dark as a weathered pine on a windless hilltop. She was grateful, terribly grateful, for the mentorship of the great man; he had power, but something else, too, some source of inner peace that she hotly coveted, far more so than the power.

Power was frightening. Washing her face and readying herself for sleep, she still could not make herself like the idea of using magic to transform her body into another creature's; it was hers, the house of her spirit as long as this lifetime would last, not for changing regularly like some suit of clothes. Hard enough, to keep up with the changes wrought on it by time. 

She saw the change in the men's faces when they spoke the words of their true speech, Ogion's, and Ged's, and it was beautiful but she could not imagine it on her own. Those faces when they did so were too much like Kossil's face, heavy with secrets and the control/paranoia they engendered. Her face, she thought, was for other things; seeing, and being seen by others, and best of all the warm dark of the night-time house, as now, when she could look out and her face was not visible, not even to herself. If it were possible to go entirely unclad, a naked spirit, the girl thought she might like that. In the absence of such appealing dignity, she meant to try the novel – to her – practice of fitting in.


End file.
